trans_9 | A little too close a call [OPEN]

Trudy walked down the corridors with her general wide stride, her dogtags jingling and her rifle bouncing against her back. She'd slung it on the other side from her healing rib - which was also why she wasn't moving really fast. Of course, she was on her way to visit the ship that had kept her alive. She had to see what all those near-misses had done. At least scratched the paint, maybe more. She thought a shot had skimmed her astromech, and then there had been the blast that had crippled the Dart.

The hanger, unsuprisingly, was fairly busy. She figured she'd run into at least a couple of the squadron's mechanics, and probably even more of the squadron. It would be good to see the guys - and she especially wanted to talk to the General.

As she crossed over to her X-wing, she passed her Samson and paused. It was still in the same state it had been before she started training with Rogue Squadron. It took up a big chunk of her time, and getting caught up in the media library on her ship's specs took up the rest of it. "Sorry bebe," she said under her breath. "Guess I've left you after all."

She walked over to the X-wing, trailing her hand along its underside. It definitely showed that it had been in a firefight. There were a couple of blaster marks hellishly close to her engines, that made her start grinning like a fool. "Guess it could have been a whole hell of a lot worse," she said, tapping the cross around her neck. "Good on you, big man."

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"Sounds to me like you were getting just as in the way of security," she said, but not like she was accusing him of anything. She didn't really give a shit whether he was a douchebag in his off hours - he'd had balls enough to go out and fly with them, and in Trudy's book, that's all that counted.

And as to that last part... well, she'd just wait patiently. "Yeah?"

There was an understood ‘no comment’ to that, mostly because Dustin didn’t feel like trying to make Trudy pick sides—she could damn well decide for herself what was more important in a situation, just like everyone else. The only problem there was that most people decided not to. Everyone apart from Dustin, it seemed sometimes.

…And partially because he was getting too tired to carry on a debating conversation. Dustin’s gasping became slightly more pronounced.

“…Well…Yeah. I owe you one.”

"Don't sweat it," Trudy said, resisting the urge to clap him on the shoulder just because he looked like he was about to fall down. "I mean, I'll expect you on my wing next time we scramble but it comes with the territory."

He obviously wasn't military. Private contractor? Civilian? Who knew. At least he knew how to fly, and knew how to shoot. "You said you built your ship?"

Yes, well, that whole ‘flying and shooting’ bit was something of a recent development. If he hadn’t trusted his own handiwork or was forced to use a different vessel, Dustin risked a good chance of passing out at the wheel. Or at least puking himself senseless, which he ended up doing anyways.

The short, scruffy man suddenly straightened—as well as that crutch and shattered right side would allow him to anyways—and beamed with arrogance and endless pride. There was a whole speech waiting for Trudy if she wanted it (and she probably didn’t), set up like the ramblings of a father describing a hugely successful child.

“From the blueprints up. I even synthesized the metal used for the hull.”

Modesty, thy name is not Dustin.

"Huh," Trudy said. She looked over the ship again - sleek lines, zippy-looking little thing. She didn't have a head for complex mechanical engineering, so she couldn't make any kind of value judgement on its function, but it had seemed to keep up with the X-wings just fine in the battle. And he was proud of it, of course, so saying something nice was in order.

"Sweet piece of machinery," she said. "Must have taken a lot of work, and she's a pretty little thing for sure." Pilots knew how to praise each other's machines. "Think you could synthesize a whole hell of a lot more?"

And he was off!

“Oh yeah,” Dustin nodded, stopping so that he may give his prize a fond once-over—they’d stumbled over to where she was parked now, alone and crumpled, given ample breathing room as if she must be kept sterile of other spaceship germs—“Ten years, actually. Most of that was designing, figuring out the different parts, how they would work and fit together. Actual construction didn’t start until…oh, three years ago? Two years? God, but the wiring! When I hooked everything together it wasn’t so bad, but writing it out beforehand? That was a year all in itself…”

He’d wandered midway around, pausing at one of the Dart’s sloping wings to take a breather. Dustin was suddenly extremely tired. He might have to cut this short.

“I’m tempted to take that either literally or as some sort of awful innuendo. The answer to both is ‘yes’,” he wiggled his thick eyebrows suggestively, “But I’d need the right materials, equipment…”

Trudy raised her eyebrows. He was irrepressible. "If I had been trying for innuendo, it would have been a lot more obvious than that," she said. "I'm talking business here - we need more ships, we need to upgrade the ones we have, and we need people capable of doing both. Not that our engineers aren't all brilliant, but don't let it go to your head when I say you're probably more brilliant."

She jerked her thumb back at the gathered X-wings. "They're zippy little birds and they've got decent firepower - compared to anything I've worked on before. But compared with those Shrikes they're waddling ducks waiting to get shot down."

She should be lucky that he has a girlfriend. Otherwise it would’ve been a lot worse.

“I’m flattered,” Dustin sniffed, not at all chagrined and completely disregarding Trudy’s advisory against letting her compliments get to his already swollen ego, “And I know I am. But I can’t do anything without materials, which I’ve noticed we have a distinct lack of. Perhaps if we were to break down some of the ships as a temporary means of creating new compounds, then rebuild them—but that would take too long, and something tells me that the pilots in question wouldn’t be very happy with me.”

He shifted off his crutch, letting himself fall into a sharp lean on the Dart’s bruised black paneling. The action was about as uncomfortable as one would expect it to be in his condition, and within moments of recovering from the shock he’d broken into a light sweat.

“Besides, my ship didn’t exactly last all that long out there either, and she has my first priorities.” Dustin seemed noticeably more irritable, possibly because he’d been knocked from his delirium or possibly because he was getting cranky. “I’m not touching any of those other ships until I fix mine.”

"Hey, I understand you," Trudy said. "I need to get back to mine and check it over more thoroughly anyway, and it's just a thought. We have our ground crew working on plans right now but nothing concrete has surfaced far as I can tell."

She hitched up her rifle and looked back over her shoulder to her ship. "I should get to work. How about you sit down before you fall down, yeah? If I have to carry you back to the medbay I'm going to drop you a couple times on principle." She gave him a sharp grin - maybe she was kidding. Probably not though.

And Dustin wasn’t about to test her on that one. With a stifled groan he hoisted himself back onto his crutch, wincing with new pain as the top padding dug into his armpit. ”That’s gonna bruise,” he realized, casting the instrument a scornful glare (because this was obviously its fault) before starting a slower hobble towards the Hangar exit. He was moving away, sure, but at that speed it was more of a head start than a decisive path, and thus he lagged and continued to talk. Trudy’s company was—surprisingly or not at all surprisingly—far more preferable than the EMH’s. Taking his time wasn’t so bad.

“Yeah, yeah, sure. I wouldn’t be as light this time around anyways—all that extra padding, must’ve added another fifteen pounds at least, and it’s all on one side, you’d tip over.” A gruff snort—the vocalization adequately masked the sound of him stumbling over his own feet, though he paused anyways to catch his breath (this was becoming increasingly more difficult). “…Whatever. Have fun, don’t die, formalities formalities.”

Trudy snorted. "Shouldn't I be the one saying that to you?" she asked - it was pointless ribbing, not seriously trying to put him down. "Hey, she said a second later. "Glad you were wearing a suit, man. Could have been a lot worse. Get yourself back to the medbay and get them to fuse that bone together some time, yeah?" She couldn't believe he was out of there at all, to tell the truth.

She gave a little abbreviated wave and turned to talk off in the direction of her X-wing.

A little too close a call [OPEN]

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